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PUBLICATIONS 

OF THE 

SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF ,x2J 

SLAVONIC STUDY /f^Q 



The Slavs of Austria -Hungary 

BY 

PROF. SARKA B. HRBKOVA 

Head of 

Department of Slavonic Languages and Literatures 

University of Nebraska 

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 



Copyrighted 1918 
— by— 

SARKA B. HRBKOVA 



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The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



THE SLAVS OF CENTRAL EUROPE 

Who are the Slavs? They are a people who some two 
thousand years before Christ, settled around the Baltic sea 
and later upon the Danube. Philologists are disagreed as 
to whether the cradle of the Slavic race should be placed in 
the neighborhood of the Baltic or further south near the 
present Balkan territory. Be that as it may, philologists 
are unanimous in asserting the relationship of the Slavic 
tongues to the Indo-European or Aryan languages. 

SLAVS ARE INDO-EUROPEANS 

So many people are under the impression that the Slavic 
tongues are wholly alien to the other languages of Europe 
that a brief statement of what groups constitute the Indo- 
European family of languages will not be amiss. This 
family includes eight main branches each of which has sev- 
eral sub-divisions. The first or Aryan includes the Indian, 
and the Iranian and those in turn have sub-divisions which 
are represented by the Sanskrit, the Zend and the old and 
modern Persian. The second is the Armenian branch. The 
third is the Hellenic, which includes all the ancient Greek 
dialects as well as modem Greek. The fourth is the Al- 
banian branch spoken in ancient Illyria and in modern 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



Albania. The fifth is the Italic branch represented by the 
Latin and other dead dialects and by the modem Romance 
languages, as French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. 
The sixth is the Celtic branch with sub-divisions of the 
Gallic, Brittanic and Gaelic and those in their turn repre- 
sented by the Cornish, Irish, Scotch-Gaelic and Manx. The 
seventh branch of the Indo-European family is the Teutonic 
which embraces three main groups, the Gothic, now extinct ; 
the Norse, including the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and 
the Icelandic; the West Germanic, which is represented by 
the German, the Saxon, Flemish, Dutch, Low Franconian, 
Frisian and English. The eighth branch is the Slavonic, 
sometimes called Balto-Slavic. The languages developed 
around the Baltic sea were the old Prussian, the Lithuanian 
and the Lettic. 

SLAVIC DIVISIONS 

The best authentic division of the Slavs today according 
to Dr. Lubor Niederle, professor of Archeology and Eth- 
nology at the Czech University at Prague, capital of Bo- 
hemia and also of the new Republic of Czechoslovakia, is 
about as follows : 

1. The Russian stem; recently a strong tendency is 
manifested toward the recognition within this stem of two 
nationalities, the Great-Russians and the Small-Russians. 

2. The Polish stem; united, with the exception of the 
small group of the Kasub Slavs, about whom it is as yet 
uncertain whether they form a part of the Poles or a rem- 
nant of the former Baltic Slavs. 

3. The Luzice-Serbian stem; dividing into an upper 
and a lower branch. 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



4. The Bohemian or Cech and Slovak stem ; inseparable 
in Bohemia and in Moravia, but with a tendency toward in- 
dividualization among the Hungarian Slovaks. 

5. The Slovenian stem. 

6. The Srbo-Chorvat (Serbian-Croatian) stem, in 
which political and cultural, but especially religious, condi- 
tions have produced a separation into two nationalities, the 
Serbian and the Croatian; and 

7. The Bulgarian stem, united. Only in Macedonia is 
it still undecided whether to consider the indigenous Slavs 
as Bulgarians or Serbians, or perhaps as an independent 
branch. 

PROOFS OF KINSHIP OF LANGUAGES 

The common origin of the Indo-European languages is 
determined mainly by two tests which the philologists ap- 
ply. These proofs of kinship are a similar structure or in- 
flectional system and a common root system. 

Practically all of the common words in use in any of the 
languages belonging to the Indo-European family are fair 
illustrations of the strong relationship existing among the 
eight branches, and are proofs of an original or parent 
tongue known to nearly all of the now widely dispersed na- 
tions of Europe. For instance, the word "mother" in the 
modem languages has these forms: In the French, it is 
"mere," abbreviated from the older Italic tongue, Latin, 
where it was "mater," in the Spanish "madre ;" in the Ger- 
man it is "Mutter;" in the Scotch the word becomes 
"mither;" in the Bohemian or Czech it is "mater" or 
"matka ;" and in the Russian it is "mat" or "mater." 



The Slavs of Austrm-Hungary 



The English verb, "to be," conjugated in the present 
tense is : 

I am we are 

you are you are 

he is they are 

It becomes "esse" in the Latin and has, in the present tense, 
these forms: 

sum sumus 

es estes 

est sunt 

In the Czech, the present indicative of "byti" (to be) is, 

ja jsem my jsme 

ty jsi vy jste 

on jest oni jsou 

The German is: 

ich bin wir sind 

du bist ihr sind 

er ist sie sind 

The natural similarity of words in the Slavic languages 
is obviously even greater and more pronounced than the re- 
semblance of words in the various Indo-European tongues. 

Thus, the word "mother" in the principal Slavic tongues 
has three forms : Russian, mati ; Czech, mati or mater ; Ser- 
bian, mati ; Polish, matka ; Bulgarian, majka or mama. The 
word for "water" is "voda" in all of the above languages 
except in Polish where it is "woda." The verb "to sit" is, in 
Russian, sidet; in Czech, sedeti; Serbian, sediti; Polish, 
siedziec; Bulgarian, sedja. One could trace this similarity 
of roots and suffixes in all the words common in the experi- 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



ence of our ancestors. The examples given are but two of 
hundreds or even thousands, which conclusively show that 
the Slavic tongues are philologically related to the other 
Indo-European tongues. 

HUNGARIANS ARE NOT SLAVS 

This relation or similarity of the European languages 
cannot be extended, however, to all tongues spoken upon the 
continent of Europe. We must except the Hungarian or 
Magyar, the Finnish and also the Turkish languages. These 
languages belong to a totally different family called the 
Ural-Altaic or Tartaric. They are not, then, to be con- 
fused with any of the Indo-European branches of lan- 
guages, although, very unfortunately, there are great num- 
bers? of people who do confuse them. One is constantly 
meeting with people who have the impression that the Huns 
or Hungarians are Slavs and that they have a speech in 
common with the Poles, Bohemians and Russians. This is 
an error which everyone should take pains to correct for "it 
has already led to any number of wrong impressions and 
conclusions about Slavic people. It is not always the un- 
initiated but apparently the well educated "intellectual" 
who makes the mistake of jumbling together nationalities of 
Europe which have nothing in common. Some time ago 
Julian Warne in his book about the coal regions of Pennsyl- 
vania indiscriminately classes as Slavs such dissimilar peo- 
ples as Magyars or Hungarians, Italians, etc. Then, this 
writer who sets himself up as an authority on the nationali- 
ties represented in our anthracite coal regions, after devot- 
ing pages to a discussion of the manners and customs of 
South Italians and transplanted natives of Hungary, calls 
his book "The Slav Invasion." There are numerous other 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



writers of books and contributors to our periodical litera- 
ture who have just as hazy an idea of what the word "Slav" 
includes or represents. Some, indeed, are so ignorant or 
else so indolently disregardful of significance as to let the 
term "Slav" or "Slavic" stand for any nation whatsoever 
from the south or east coast of Europe. 

ORIGIN OF WORD "SLAV" 

The etymology of the word "Slav" was not absolute for 
some time. Some philologists connected it with the word 
"slava" which means "glory" or "the glorious race." Others, 
and the numbers of such linguistic students or scholars ex- 
ceed the former school, have accepted the theory of Joseph 
Dobrovsky, the Bohemian philologist, who asserted that the 
term comes from "slovo" which signifies "word" or "those 
who know words." The term in the original Slavic is 
"Slovan" which is more closely allied in appearance and 
sound to the word from which it is derived. Dobrovsky 
claimed that the earliest ancestors of the present Slavs 
called themselves "Slovane" or "men who knew words or 
languages" in contradistinction to the Germans who did not 
know their words or language and hence were called 
"Nemci" from "nemy" meaning "dumb." The Slavic name 
for Germans, oddly enough, has remained "Nemci" or "the 
dumb ones" to this day. This dubbing of a neighbor na- 
tion which is dissimilar in language and customs recalls the 
practice of the ancient Greeks who named all other nations 
who were not Greeks "barbarians." 

SLAV TYPES 

Prof. Niederle states that anthropologically "the Slavs 
are characterized by a mostly rounded head, good cranial 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



capacity, medium stature, and a good physical development. 
In complexion they range from brunette to blonde, the 
former predominating among the southern Slavs and among 
the Malorussians, while blondes are more numerous among 
the northern parts of the stock, and especially among the 
Bielorussians." He asserts that the Slavs who emigrate to 
the United States "become completely assimilated with the 
indigenous population within two generations." 



WHERE THE SLAVS LIVE 

Until recent times, the average newspaper reader who 
came upon the word "Slav" in the daily budget of war news 
had but a confused conception of where the Slavic nations 
live. With the exception of Russia, no other of the Slavic 
countries can be successfully located on a map by the ordi- 
nary person. There are even school teachers and, doubtless, 
many college professors as well who, before the present war 
for the life of them, could not have told, off-hand, the loca- 
tion of Serbia, Montenegro, Bohemia or Ukrainia. 

The Slavic countries extend from the western shores of 
the Pacific to the Baltic, Adriatic, Aegian and Black Seas. 
Sweeping across Siberia and beyond the Urals westward 
over the Oder and Elbe to the Bohemian forest of Sumava, 
the Slavic territory extends far into the Alps and to the very 
source of the river Save. 

In the seventh century the Slavs owned all the land from 
Carinthia up to and including the Elbe territory. In that 
period more than half of the Germany of today was in- 
habitated by Slavs who neighbored with the Saxons and 
Angles as far north as Kiel. The Polabians, a Slavic group 
living along the Elbe or "Labe," as the Czechs call it, op- 



10 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



posed Germanization until the eighteenth century. The 
very names "Prussia" and "Berlin" by a strange trick of 
fate are Slavic in origin and were words coined by a people 
every characteristic of whom is un-Prussian and anti-Ber- 
lin as these terms are understood today. At the present 
time, of all the original thousands of Slavs in Prussia and 
Saxony there remain only a few scattering groups of Lu- 
sation Serbs. 

To detail the geographic location of each Slavonic na- 
tion more definitely — the Russians inhabit Russia in Europe 
more particularly, the black earth belt east of Poland, Little 
Russia or Ukrainia, and also Russia, in Asia ; or Siberia. 

THE POLES 

The origin of the name "Pole" is "pole" (pronounced in 
two syllables) meaning "field" or "meadow," a "Polak" or 
"Polan" being one who inhabited or tilled the field. The 
Poles live in the western part of Russia, in Galicia or Aus- 
trian Poland and in East Prussia or German Poland. The 
Polish territory was once a unit consisting of the lands lo- 
cated between the Oder, the Carpathians and the Baltic, 
but after the partitions in 1772, 1793 and 1795 each of the 
governments, Russia, Austria, and Germany, helped itself 
to the Poland pie. From earliest times, the Poles had to 
defend themselves against the Germans who thought to sub- 
jugate them as they had the Slavs along the Elbe. Then 
too, the Polish territory was invaded by the Tatars, but 
against all this, including the bitter and unremitting Ger- 
manization, the Poles have preserved a splendidly tenacious 
national spirit. In 1900 there were 4,500,000 Poles in Aus- 
tria; 8,500,000 in Russia; 3,500,000 in Germany, and 
1,500,000 in the United States. 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 11 



THE BULGARIANS 

Three million Bulgarians live in Bulgaria proper and 
100,000 in Roumelia, just south of Roumania, and west of 
the Black Sea, 1,200,000 in Macedonia, 600,000 in other 
parts of the Balkan peninsula and Turkey, 180,000 in Rus- 
sia. The Bulgarians speak a Slavic dialect but are less 
homogeneous anthropologically than the Slavs proper as 
they have a very considerable admixture of foreign ele^ 
ments. 

WHERE THE SERBIANS LIVE 

The Lusatian or Luzice Serbs occupy territory along the 
central and lower Elbe and every effort has been made to 
exterminate or absorb them by the Germans. Only some 
130,000 still preserve the language which their forefathers 
brought with them in the ninth century. 

The Serbo-Croatians or Serbians live in the independent 
kingdom of Serbia, Montenegro, parts of Dalmatia, Sla- 
vonia, northwestern Albania and Macedonia, and in Bosnia 
and Hercegovina, which two states Austria "annexed" in 
1908 after having administered their affairs since 1878. 
The very important fact that, as far as language is con- 
cerned, the inhabitants of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and 
Hercegovina are homogenous people will doubtless clear for 
many the misconceptions under which they have been labor- 
ing in trying to determine why Montenegro and Serbia have 
worked together so harmoniously for union and for the pos- 
session of Bosnia-Hercegovina. It has not in any sense been 
a war merely for additional territory. It has been a pur- 
poseful, earnest struggle of a Slavic people to regain and 
reunite Slavic territory and as a unified Serbian people who 



12 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



have had in turn to fight off the Turks from the south, the 
Hungarians from the east and the Austrian usurpers from 
the north. Montenegro, the smallest kingdom in the world, 
has successfully kept out the plundering Turk for over five 
hundred years. It has tried to regain territory just south 
of its borders lost to the Turks in past centuries, but when, 
through sheer force of arms, it had accomplished its pur- 
pose, the powers wrested the gains of battle from the in- 
trepid Serbians of the country of the black mountains 
or "Cerna Hora." 

MOSAIC AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

The Slavs of Austria-Hungary are the least easily lo- 
cated geographically of any of the nationalities of this 
prolific branch. This is partly because the average reader 
is not familiar with the divisions of Austria itself that dif- 
ficulty is experienced in learning the boundaries of the 
Slavic states. This lack of accurate information is not to 
be wondered at when one considers that Austria-Hungary 
was made up of twenty-one different states or provinces, 
which, individually taken, were kingdoms, principalities, 
margraviates, duchies, etc. Each of these states had a pop- 
ulation of a wholly different character from its neighbor. 
Thus Salzburg, a province in western Austria is chiefly 
German, whereas Carinthia, just south of Salzburg, is a 
populous duchy with a very large percentage of Slovenians 
who are of Slav nationality. In the southeast is Hungary, 
the country of the Magyars, who are of Turkish-Tatar 
origin and in no way similar to their neighbors on the north, 
the Slovaks, a simple agricultural Slav people, who have 
suffered untold persecutions at the hands of both Hun- 
garians and Germans, 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 13 



In general, Austria, which name is derived from 
"Oesterreich," signifying in German "the eastern empire," 
is divided into Austria proper or Cisleithania, meaning "on 
this side of the Leitha" (a tributary of the Danube, on the 
frontiers of the archduchy of Austria and Hungary), and 
Transleithania or lands of the Hungarian crown. The Aus- 
tro-Hungarian lands or states are Lower Austria, Upper 
Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Gortz, Gradiska, 
Istria, Trieste, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, Bohemia, Moravia, Si- 
lesia, Galicia, Bukowina, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herce- 
govina, Hungary, Croatia, and Slavonia. In each of these 
states there is more or less of a Slav population. Bohemia, 
Moravia and Galicia have the largest Slavic population, 
these three states alone having some twenty millions of 
Czechs and Poles. 



ONE-HALF OF AUSTRIA SLAVIC 

As a matter of fact the census of 1910 gave Austria- 
Hungary a population of some 50,000,000 of whom fully 
half were Slavs, though by no means Slavs of the same na- 
tionalistic group. In the total of Austria's 25,000,000 
Slavic inhabitants there were about 7,500,000 Czechs and 
Moravians, 2,500,000 Slovaks, 7,000,000 Poles, 6,000,000 
Serbo-Croatians, 1,000,000 Russians and Ruthenians and 
1,260,000 Slovenes. 

TOTAL SLAV POPULATION 

Professor Niederle has estimated very conservatively 
when he placed 157,000,000 as the figures for the Slavic pop- 
ulation of the world in 1910. The Slavs are a prolific peo- 



14 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



pie particularly the southern or Balkan groups. Among the 
Bulgarians, the birth rate is higher than among any other 
people of Europe. Were not the numerical strength of the 
Slavs decimated by a very high death rate (Petrograd has 
the highest death rate of any large city in the entire world) , 
there would be no limit to estimates of the Slav population. 

William T. Stead, the famous English editor who went 
down in the Titanic, predicted some ten or twelve years ago, 
the eventual supremacy of the Slavic people. "If for no 
other reason, the Slavs will rule by mere force of numbers," 
he wrote after a detailed statement of numerous other in- 
controvertible bases for his prophecy. 

It is not too liberal an estimate to place the figures for 
the Slavic population of the world in 1918 at 180,000,000. 
Some students of statistics who consider themselves conser- 
vative have made the figures 200,000,000. But to avoid ex- 
tremes we will stick to the former estimates. These 
180,000,000 of Slavs represent almost one-tenth of the total 
population of the world and occupy about one-sixth of the 
earth's land surface. All but a fraction of this area is in- 
cluded in Russia. 

MINIMIZING SLAV POPULATION OF 
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

These figures for population and areas appear stupen- 
dous to the thinking person who considers them in their re- 
lation to the mass. But in reality they are not as fearsome as 
they seem or as they are made to appear by the Teuton, who 
has been seeing pan-Slavic spectres in the world of Euro- 
pean politics. The German has systematically made the fig- 
ures of Slav population in Austria-Hungary especially, 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 15 



much less than in reality as it has been a trick of the gov- 
ernment to make estimates according to the "language of 
intercourse" which by no means implied the mother tongue 
of the major portion of that country's people. 

Thus, if a man were able to answer a simple question 
put to him in German, it would immediately be recorded 
of him "Mother-tongue, German." On the basis of thus in- 
flated figures, the government would apportion the money 
for schools or the nationality to be favored in political rep- 
resentation. A German majority (?) gained by this dis- 
honest practice would then be represented by a German in 
the Vienna parliament instead of by a Czech or Pole or Ser- 
bian who would be of the real majority. 

DIFFICULTIES OPPOSING UNIFICATION 

Exclusive of Russia which is geographically and lin- 
guistically more nearly homogeneous than any similar ex- 
panse of country, there is neither contiguity of Slavic ter- 
ritory nor unified religious, social or political ideals in the 
remaining Slavic states. The Russians, Bulgarians and 
Serbians are, as a rule, Greek Catholics, "orthodox" or 
"pravoslavni" whereas the Slovaks and Poles and a large 
number of the Czechs are Roman Catholics. Among the 
Czechs, Slovaks and Croats there are also many Protes- 
tants, whereas numerous groups of Serbs in Bosnia and 
Hercegovina have been adherents of Mohammedanism, thus 
further complicating the situation. The success of the 
powerful organization of the mediaeval Church in German- 
izing the Slavs has been a cause for praise by all Pan Ger- 
man writers at all ages. 

The diversity of religions, customs, and languages, has 
been a stumbling block to the political union of the branches 



16 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



of the Slavic race fully as much as the fact that geograph- 
ically these nations are not adjacent, but hemmed in on all 
sides by neighbors of totally different speech and customs. 

Nevertheless a state was organized by the Slavs of Bo- 
hemia, Moravia, Silesia (Slezsko )and Slovakia which re- 
sisted Germanization through the means of the mediaeval 
church most strenuously and even accepted its Christianity 
from Constantinople, in 863, through the missionaries, Cyril 
and Methodius, rather than from the emissaries of Rome. 
The territory embraced in these four kindred lands speak- 
ing a similar language now fitly represents the new 
Czechoslovakia — the first republic of Central Europe which 
the Hohenzollern and Hapsburgs thought they had fully 
Teutonized. 

WHY "BOHEMIA?" WHY "CZECHS?" 

In their fight for the independence of Bohemia, the 
Czechs and their descendants in America frequently en- 
countered questions as to the proper title to be applied to 
the nation. Those who are informed usually reply by stat- 
ing that "Bohemia" is the right term to apply to the coun- 
try whereas "Czech" is technically the proper designation 
of the inhabitants of the country. In order to explain the 
distinction in the names applied to the country and to the 
people, a brief outline of the nation's early history is nec- 
essary. 

ORIGIN OF WORD "CZECH" 

The name "Czech" or "Cech" as it is correctly written 
should by all rights be the only title applied to the group 
of Slavic people occupying the 22,000 square miles in North- 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 17 



em Austria. It is a word originally designating the leader 
of the small band of Slavs who, in the fifth century, emi- 
grating from Western Russia, settled in the valley of the 
Vltava (Moldau) in the heart of Europe and there have 
remained as the sturdy vanguard of the Slav people. Gen- 
eral Fadejev well said in 1869 "Without Bohemia the Slav 
cause is forever lost; it is the head, the advance guard, of 
all Slavs." From the word "Cech" is derived the poetic name 
"Cechia" for Bohemia, this term corresponding to our sym- 
bolic "Columbia" for America. 

ORIGIN OF WORD "BOHEMIA" 

The names "Bohemia" and "Bohemians" as applied to 
the country and to this group of Slavs respectively, are de- 
rived from the word "Boji," or Boii, a Celtic tribe, occupy- 
ing the basin of the Vltava and the Elbe before the perma- 
nent settlement there of the Czechs. Julius Caesar in his 
"Commentaries on the Gallic Wars" speaks frequently of 
the "Boji" and "Marcomanni." The word "Boii" was in 
the Latinized form, "Bojohemum," applied to the country of 
those early Celts who had occupied the country and event- 
ually the name "Bojohemum" was changed to "Bohemia." 
In the later days, the Slav inhabitants became known as 
"Bohemians" to the outside races unfamiliar with the cor- 
rect term "cech" which to facilitate pronunciation by non- 
Slavs is written "Czech." The "Cz" is pronounced like "ch" 
in "child," the "e" like "e" in "net," and the final "ch" is 
pronounced like "h" sounded gutturally. 

THE THREE "BOHEMIANS" 

Czechs and Americans of Czech blood have had to ex- 
plain repeatedly and untiringly the correct origin of the 



18 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



word "Bohemian." The confusion consequent on the mis- 
conceptions of the meaning of the word "Bohemian" has 
not been confined to the ignorant or unlettered. Even peo- 
ple of unusual intelligence have had a most hazy notioji of 
what is meant by the term "Bohemian" as applied to an indi- 
vidual of a certain linguistic group. The dictionaries give 
three definitions: (1). A gipsy; (2) A person, especially a 
literary person, journalist, or artist, of unconventional and 
erratic habits; (3) Pertaining to Bohemia or its language 
or people. A native or naturalized inhabitant of Bohemia." 
All the modem dictionaries now give this last meaning the 
first place of prominence and importance, but formerly 
when one said one was a Bohemian the first or second 
definition as given above were the only ones the average 
person appeared to be acquainted with. Why the confu- 
sion? 

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS 

It was the writer's experience, on innumerable occasions 
to note this confusion in the popular mind with respect to 
the three kinds of Bohemians. Some very good people have 
confounded the Czechs who have continuously occupied the 
country of Bohemia for nearly fifteen hundred years with 
wandering, nomadic tribes of "Tsigany." This error was 
probably due to the mistake made by the French who sup- 
posed the homeless Protestants exiled from Bohemia in 1620 
were wandering gypsies, or it may have arisen as a result of 
the race of the chief character in M. W. Balfe's popular 
opera "The Bohemian Girl." 

Some years ago in collecting contemporary reference 
material on Bohemia, the writer subscribed to a clipping 
bureau, which institution agreed to furnish articles on that 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 19 



subject for a stated period. The heterogeneous matter 
which was received, all properly tagged as to date and pub- 
lication, from that clipping bureau convinced the writer 
that everything and anything with the word "Bohemia" in 
it that came to the bureau's figurative net was regarded as 
"fish" and was immediately labelled thus and sent on. For 
instance, there arrived one day a long account of a most 
alluring picnic of journalists, illustrators and musicians of 
San Francisco with the head lines "High Jinks of the Bo- 
hemian Club." Another day there arrived a spicy article 
entitled "A Bohemian Cabaret Banquet" and describing a 
social function held by the ultra-ultra of New York's thrill- 
ing-for-thrills set. "The Bohemian Doings of Ruth Bryan," 
was another example of what the professional reader for 
the bureau looked upon as legitimate prey in his hunt for 
"references on the Bohemian people, language and coun- 
try," as the writer's order was stated. 

These few illustrations of hundreds of similar errors 
about the real Czechs or Bohemians will make plain only 
one of the difficulties this group of Slavs has had to endure. 

Will S. Monroe in his very readable historical work, 
"Bohemia and the Cechs" has sought through the title to dis- 
criminate between the name of the country of Bohemia and 
its inhabitants. 

GROWTH OF BOHEMIA 

Practically from the time of its settlement by the Czechs, 
Bohemia, being highly favored topographically, prospered 
and grew as an independent state, its kings becoming Elec- 
tors of the Holy Roman Empire. In fact two of Bohemia's 
Kings — Charles IV and his son Vaclav (Wencelaus) were 



20 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



elected Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Bohemia 
even reached the Adriatic sea in the extension of its Em- 
pire under Premysl Ottokar II (1253-1278) but that am- 
bitious ruler was overcome by Rudolph of Hapsburg who 
by this conquest really was the founder of the pretentious 
domain of the bloody partners of the Hohenzollems. Un- 
fortunately some of the Czech rulers had invited coloniza- 
tion of their land by Germans which proved detrimental at 
all later periods. 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Bohemia lead 
in the great literary and reform revivals that metamor- 
phosed the world. In 1348 Charles IV laid in Prague, the 
foundation of the first University of Central Europe — this 
highest institution of learning ante-dating the first German 
university by fully fifty years. 

The first school of art in Central Europe was also estab- 
lished at Prague at this time, the Modenese school of paint- 
ing being founded there. John Huss and Jerome of Prague 
lead the marvelous religious reforms of the early part of 
the fifteenth century. Huss stood firmly for the Bible and 
for individual conscience as opposed to Rome and Church 
authority and for his insistence on this "heretical" pro- 
gram, he was burned at the stake in Constance on the 6th 
of July, 1415. One hundred and twenty years later came 
Martin Luther, acknowledging the great debt he owed to 
John Huss whose writings had fired the author of the Augs- 
burg Confession to the zeal which brought about the Refor- 
mation, for the greater part of which all credit should be 
given to the Bohemian Martyr of five centuries ago. 

DOWNFALL OF BOHEMIA 

Then came the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren 
(Unitas Fratrum) founded by Peter Chelcicky to whom 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 2% 



Tolstoi owed his non-resistance doctrine. This organiza- 
tion carried forward to the seventeenth century the noble 
humanitarianism of Huss in the splendid example of John 
Amos Komensky (Comenius), educational reformer and 
founder of a science of education, who is best known for 
inventing the natural method of learning, the preparation 
of the first illustrated text book and many ideas that smack 
of the twentieth century and not of an age three hundred 
years previous. 

The battle of Bila Hora fought November 8, 1620, near 
Prague marked the burial of Bohemian independence for 
practically two hundred years. The constant invasions of 
Czech territory by the belligerents of the Thirty Years' War 
utterly exhausted the country and made it an easy prey for 
the Germanization and centralization plans of Joseph II in 
the eighteenth century. But instead of complete annihila- 
tion, the old free spirit, kept alive by zealous patriots, rose 
again in a nineteenth century renaissance and has charac- 
terized the Czechs as the most cultured and progressive of 
the peoples of Central Europe, their percentage of literacy 
exceeding that of even the much vaunted German. Today 
their age-old devotion to the principles of democracy and 
freedom are rewarded in the recognition by the govern- 
ments of England, France, Italy, Japan and the United 
States of the independence of the Czechoslovak Republic, 
which under Prof. T. G. Masaryk as president bids fair to 
keep pace with the most progressive of the free peoples of 
the earth. 

THE SLOVAKS 

When the Magyars or Hungarians, a Mongolian tribe, 
invaded Hungary, they spelled disaster to Slavic unity for, 



22 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



linguistically and racially, they were so different from 
the Czechs and Slovaks that they have ever been a scourge 
and a menace to those two Slavic peoples. 

The Slovaks, most nearly allied in language and customs 
to the Czechs, occupy the fields and Carpathian mountains 
of northern Hungary. A splendid and ancient history is 
theirs though in latter centuries it has become one contin- 
uous record of bitter oppression suffered first at the hands 
of the Tatar invaders and then from the cruel Magyars of 
Hungary and of the always privileged Germans of the 
Hapsburg domain. Slovakia suffered the misfortune of be- 
ing incorporated with Hungary in the tenth century and 
Magyarization has gone on relentlessly as a result. The 
Slovak language has been wonderfully developed since the 
time of Anton Bernolak but every means, every fiendish 
device has been used by the Magyars to utterly exterminate 
the race speaking it and to crush out completely all memory 
of the tongue hated so desperately by the Hungarians. It 
must not be forgotten that the Hungarian, Count Tisza now 
of tainted fame and unmourned memory, on December 15, 
1875, said on the floor of the Hungarian Parliament, "There 
is no Slovak nation." He had done his best to annihilate it 
but it has lived just as the spirit of France has lived in 
Alsace-Lorraine despite the superhuman efforts of Hun- 
gary's ally to Germanize the "Lost Provinces." Over 
2,000,000 Slovaks live in Hungary and nearly a million have 
emigrated to this country as much to avoid the persecu- 
tions of the Magyars as to earn the advantages of America. 

THE SLOVENES 

This branch of the Slavonic family represents over a mil- 
lion and a quarter individuals in Carinthia, Gorizia, Car- 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 23 



niola, Styria, the northern part of Istria, Trieste and ad- 
joining parts of northeastern Italy and western Hungary 
which has systematically oppressed them in almost the de- 
gree it has persecuted the Slovaks of its northwest dis- 
tricts. 

About 100,000 Slovenians live in the United States. The 
Slovenes occupied the region around the Adriatic and far 
into the Alps, as early as the year 600. 

THE CROATIANS OR CROATS 

The Croatians were originally united with the Serbians 
linguistically but later territorial, tribal and language dif- 
ferences arose. From the seventh to the twelfth century, 
the Croatians were independent politically but in 1102, the 
Croatian Kingdom became attached to Hungary. Today 
the Croatians occupy parts of Istria, Dalmatia, and Bosnia, 
all of Croatia, and portions of Slavonia and south Hungary. 
No less an authority than R. W. Seton Watson gives the 
Croats over 3,500,000 population with 1,750,000 nationals 
in Croatia-Slavonia alone. The Serbo-Croats of Bosnia and 
Turkey who are of Mohammedan faith, number, all told, 
about 750,000. 

AUSTRIA HAS KEPT SLAVS APART 

The difficulty of means of communication through un- 
friendly territory has been augmented by every possible 
sort of restriction which the Austrian government could 
devise, for it realized that an alliance of the Slavic states 
within its borders would be disastrous to its scheme for ex- 
pansion. Austria understood the strength of the Slavs 
within its borders better than they themselves appreciated 



24 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



it. For that reason it has spared no pains to foment petty 
quarrels between the Slav states within its territory just as 
it has been its policy to sow the seeds of dissention among 
the Balkan nations in Europe's "backyard." Austria has 
known that a united front among the free Slav states of 
Europe combined with those who are subordinated to her 
government or that of Germany would mean a throwing 
off of the hated Hapsburg yoke. 

THE NEW DAWN 

The political revolution of the liberalists of Europe in 
1848 was the turning point in a new revival of national 
feeling and the Czechs began at this time to feel more 
strongly their close kinship to Russia, the Slovaks, Serbs, 
Croatians, Slovenes and all brother Slavs. In the capital 
city of Bohemia, the first Pan Slavic Congress was held. 
At first this feeling of unity was evinced only along the line 
of literature but it soon passed over into national politics. 
The Czechs demanded again and again the restitution of 
their national rights and fought for democratic rule and 
the federalization of the Empire as opposed to the central- 
izing absolutism of Austria. 

Frantisek Palacky, the most eminent of Bohemian his- 
torians and a member of the Austrian Parliament simply 
afiirmed the stand of the Czechs in this defense. "The 
rights of nations consist really of the rights of Nature ; no 
nation on earth has the right to demand that, for its benefit, 
a neighboring nation should sacrifice itself. Nature recog- 
nizes neither ruling nor serving nations. As long as the 
nations will have any cause to fear for the preservation of 
their nationality, for equality of rights, there can never be 
any possibility of contentment and peace in Austria." 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 25 



Prof. Thomas G. Masaryk said some years ago — most 
aptly — "The national ideals of Bohemia and her Reforma- 
tion are unrealizable in Austria-Hungary, where the organ- 
ization of brute force secures to the minority the means of 
exploiting the majority. Bohemia can never accept the ideal 
of Prussia and Germany, which would enslave the world by 
military drill and Machiavellian misuse of science and cul- 
ture." 

HOW AUSTRIA HAS GROWN 

Austria's schemes for securing European territory have 
ranged from purchases, more or less enforced upon the orig- 
inal possessor, cleverly planned marriages of scions of the 
mentally degenerate house of Hapsburg with members of 
adjoining states which then were willy-nilly, "annexed" to 
the empire, to wars of lustful conquest of territory of some 
weaker or dependent state which has no fearless or power- 
ful protector. A very sly but successful method which Aus- 
tria has employed to acquire more land has been the appar- 
ently altruistic and magnanimous one of establishing a pro- 
tectorate (?) over some nearby state which is or may be 
threatened by some unfriendly power. This protectorate 
eventually results in another "Land Grab" or to put the 
term "stealing" into more elegant and less offensive Eng- 
lish, Austria then "annexes" the previously protected (?) 
or "peacefully penetrated" country. In this manner Aus- 
tria acquired Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose population is 
chiefly Serbian, that is, Slavic, though as a result of numer- 
ous invasions by the Turks, a large portion of the inhabit- 
ants are Mohammedan in religion. The Berlin treaty of 
1878 over which Bismarck presided, put Bosnia and Her- 
zegovina under Austria's administration. In the autumn of 



26 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



1909 when there was a constitutional revolution in Turkey, 
Austria-Hungary formally annexed the united Serbian 
provinces, adding thereby 20,000 square miles to its terri- 
tory and 1,900,000 to its population. 

The Serbians, however, never forgot their nationality 
even though submerged in the Austrian territory. The Ser- 
bians of Bosnia-Herzegovina, like those in the independent 
kingdom of Serbia, had dreamed of a reunited Serbia, which 
their free brothers in Montenegro were likewise ready to 
join. The Croats too have stubbornly refused to be swal- 
lowed up in Hungary which has tried to treat them as a 
subject nation. Croatia and Slavonia have been consistent 
and unremitting in their hostility to the Magyars and have 
stood for an independent South Slav or Jugoslav state. 

HOW AUSTRIA BALKED SERBIA 

Austria-Hungary, with its 260,943 square miles of area, 
second only to Russia in matter of geographical extent in 
Europe, still turned its greedy eyes southward towards 
Serbia. At the close of the Balkan war, when the matter of 
settlement of boundaries was left to the powers of Europe, 
it was Austria which refused to allow Serbia to reap the 
reward of its sturdy campaign against the merciless Turk. 
It likewise held out against allowing Serbian Montenegro to 
hold Scutari, which it had won by means fairer than Aus- 
tria ever employed. Serbia had tried repeatedly to secure 
an opening to the Adriatic sea, for its extensive commerce 
which it has been compelled to send over the Danube, into 
Austria. It had to submit to delay, insolence, injustice and 
repeated losses at the hands of its powerful neighbor, which 
could and often did prohibit the transfer of perishable 
goods across its borders from Serbia. Serbia could do 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 27 



nothing about it, for it was small and weak in comparison, 
while Austria was great and powerful. It realized that it 
stood in the way of Austria's otherwise unimpeded march to 
the Aegean sea, where it had hoped for many generations 
to secure the fine city and port of Salonika. It was part of 
the Bismarckian "all Deutch" policy to Germanize the en- 
tire central portion of Europe. Bismarck thought it would 
be best to leave western Europe to the Italic nations such as 
the French, Spanish, Italian, etc. The extreme east of Eu- 
rope the Russians were welcome to keep, was his theory, 
but central Europe from the Baltic and North seas to the 
Adriatic and Aegean must become wholly German. All 
other elements — Slavic, French, Danish, Magyar — must be 
wiped out of existence. To the Teuton it looked easy to 
overwhelm and wipe out of existence or make over into 
Germans the Slavic states of the Balkans, as well as the 
Slavic kingdoms, margraviates and duchies composing the 
bulk of the Austra-Hungarian empire. It appears that the 
German has no conception of the fact that the instinct of 
nationality is something that cannot be killed in a man ; that 
it is independent of country occupied, institutions which 
may be established or of government control. 

After Germany's absorption of Schleswig-Holstein and 
Alsace-Lorraine, the war was carried into the south. 
Rather, one might say, that the policy of pan-Germanism 
was continued for there really never had been any cessa- 
tion of the process of Germanizing the Czechs, Slovaks, 
Croatians, Poles, Serbians and all other Slavs within the 
German or Austrian territory. Hungary, though not a Slav 
country, was likewise in the path of the Austrian displeas- 
ure for it persisted in its demands for the recognition of the 
Magyar tongue. 



28 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



And so the war just concluded is but the culmination 
of the ambitions of one branch of the great Indo-European 
family for supremacy over the other members. It is not 
even the entire branch but only the German portion of the 
Teutonic group which, in this greatest of family quarrels, 
insisted that might gives right to trample on the claims of 
the little sisters and brothers. 

PLEA OF SMALL NATIONS 

Richard Le Gallienne, English poet and critic, in his 
earnest lines entitled, "The Cry of the Little People, says: 

"And what shall you gain if you take us, and bind us and beat us with 

thongs, 
And drive us to sing underground in a whisper our sad little songs? — 
Forbid us the very use of our heart's own nursery tongue — 
Is this to be strong, you nations — is this to be strong? 
Your vulgar battle to flght, and your shopman conquests to keep. 
For this shall we break our hearts, for this shall our old men weep?" 

It would seem that Le Gallienne were indeed voicing 
hopeless impotence before mere might in his concluding 
stanza : 

"The cry of the little peoples went up to God in vain. 
For the world is given over to the cruel sons of Cain: 
The hand that would bless us is weak, and the hand that would break 

us is strong, 
And the power of pity is naught but the power of a song. 
The dreams that our fathers dreamed today are laughter and dust. 
And nothing at all in the world is left for a man to trust. 
Let us hope no more or dream of prophesy or pray. 
For the iron world no less will crash on in its iron way; 
And nothing is left but to watch, with a helpless, pitying eye. 
The kind old aims for the world, and the kind old fashions die." 

But dawn has come. Great nations have heeded the des- 
pairing cry of the "Little Peoples" and splendidly they sup- 
ported the principle of self-determination. The formal 



The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 29 



recognition by England, France, Italy, Japan and the 
United States of the Independence of the Czechoslovak gov- 
ernment, the first Slav state carved out of "Mittel-Europa" 
is but a small beginning of the meting out of justice to the 
oppressed nations of the earth who shall share with the 
powerful states the fundamental and inalienable right of 
every people to organize their own government. Poland is 
to be reunited. Its dreams will come true. The Slavs of 
southern Austria and of the Balkans will form a great and 
democratic Jugoslavia. "Austria delenda est" and out of 
the corruption of a decayed and outlived government there 
are springing forth new born nations with age old aspira- 
tions for freedom. Britannia, France, Italia — and now 
Slavia lead by star crowned Columbia joins the circle of 
free and democratic nations. 



30 The Slavs of Austria-Hungary 



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'The Slovaks of Hungary. Thomas Capek. New York. G. P. 
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The United States and Pan Germania. Andre Cheradame. 
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The Pan-German Plot Unmasked. Andre Cheradame. 
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